Creating is Messy

So the last few posts have been about some crafty things I have been making. After I finished the bulk of the work, that fun part starts...the clean up! While I'm cleaning, I realize just how big of a mess crafting is, and why my OCD husband insisted on a craft room for me in our new house (aka...to contain my mess!). 

This got me thinking. God is the ultimate creator. We all know the story from Genesis where he makes Earth and everything in it. But what my ADD brain thought of next was actually about how he made it. I thought about grade school science where I had to give a presentation about ecosystems. God didn't just create things on Earth, but he created them with cycles and balances. The death of one thing in an ecosystem actually gets reinvested in the environment to create something new. While it can be complicated to explain in a large ecosystem like a forest, I can see this simply in my backyard. Fall brings colder temperatures which tell the trees to start going dormat for the winter. This is why we get beautiful colors of leaves in the fall. These leaves eventually fall off into my yard. Then I can take these now dead leaves and compost them until spring when I can use them now as soil to plant new seedlings. We have taken something dead and used it to make something new. It's messy, and it's hard work...but it cretes something beautiful...like my garden. 

This sparked an idea for me that I understood to a certain extent, but highlighted and expanded the importance of it in my head. If God made this reinvesting cycle into the very fabric of the Earth, this would probably be a good foundation to use in ministry too. We should design our ministry structures to not just extract what we can from what we have between people and money, but reinvest it into the very fabric of the ministry, especially in the people that come and serve. We should be thinking about how the work they do is not only investing in the people they serve, but in themselves as well. The work they do can reinvested into community and relationship building, flexing their spiritual muscles to step out of their comfort zones, or teaching them a skill they didn't know. We can find lots of different ways to invest in the people that come to work and volunteer in ministry that helps them outside the walls of the church as well. 

It will probably be messy, and it might make me pull my hair out sometimes figuring it all out. But if we do it and God works in it, we as a church can create something beautiful. 

Talk to y'all soon!

Maddie